The Most Effective Hormone Replacement Therapies
Human growth hormone, or HGH, has many benefits for adults suffering from age-related growth hormone deficiency. As beneficial as HGH can be, growth hormone therapy is not designed to be given indefinitely. Even if you have been diagnosed with adult growth hormone deficiency, there will be a time when you will have to stop taking HGH. However, there is a right way and a wrong way to stop taking HGH. Let’s take a closer look at why you would want to or need to stop taking HGH, how to safely stop taking HGH, and what impacts stopping HGH has on the body.
Before we discuss how to safely stop taking HGH, let’s learn a bit about what HGH is, what functions it has in the body, and why HGH injections may be prescribed for adults with growth hormone issues in the first place.
HGH is one of our most critical hormones. As you can probably guess from its name, its primary function is stimulating and regulating growth. That is true HGH is responsible for all of the processes that help children grow into healthy adults of full stature.
But HGH does much more than that. Even once we are fully grown, adult bodies still make and need growth hormone. HGH in adults is responsible for the health and lifecycle of every cell of every organ in your body. It is necessary to build and replace muscle tissue; it plays a significant role in your ability to metabolize fat, and it is even essential for sexual health and cognition!
However, as vital as HGH is to our overall health and quality of life, your HGH levels do decline with age. This steady drop in HGH levels that starts around 30 can lead to a condition known as "adult-onset" or "age-related" growth hormone deficiency (GHD).
These symptoms of GHD in adults are treated with prescription HGH injections. Growth hormone injections are usually prescribed for a course of six to twelve months. Only your doctor can determine when it is time for you to stop HGH and show you the safe and proper way to stop taking HGH injections.
The many benefits of HGH for adults suffering from low levels of growth hormone have been proven many times. However, as good as HGH can be for patients diagnosed with GHD, they are never intended to be taken for an indefinite period of time.
In all growth hormone therapy patients, there will come a time when it will be necessary to stop taking HGH. Even before that end-point is reached, there could be reasons why you or your healthcare provider may want you to stop taking HGH. Some of the reasons to stop taking HGH even before you prescribed treatment plan include:
Regardless of why you may want or need to stop HGH therapy, you should never, ever stop taking your prescribed dose without consulting with your healthcare provider. If the reason you want to stop taking your HGH is because of uncomfortable or adverse effects, perhaps changing your dose or brand of HGH can help. If you want to quit because you are not achieving your desired results, perhaps a change of dose is in order.
If it is time to stop taking your HGH because you have reached the end of your program, you still must consult with your doctors about what to do after taking your last injection to maintain your results as well as to make sure that you do not need to continue on another program of injections.
If you take away just one message from this page, it should be that the decision to stop taking growth hormone is one you should always make with your doctor or healthcare provider, regardless of the reasons why.
You can experience a kind of “withdrawal” when you stop taking HGH. It is not severe like you might encounter on cigarettes, alcohol, or some other addictive substance, but you still will experience a kind of withdrawal because, after six months or more on HGH, your body will have gotten used to getting its weekly “boost” of HGH.
If you simply stop HGH “cold turkey,” the shock of the sudden deprivation of HGH could cause your energy levels and libido to drop. You may feel moody, depressed, and anxious and could experience brain fog and cognitive issues. This is why you should only stop taking HGH while working with your healthcare provider.
Exactly what can happen when you stop HGH is different in each patient. The factors that can impact what exactly will happen to you when you stop taking HGH depend on your particular dose, why you were prescribed growth hormone therapy in the first place, and how long you have been taking HGH.
If you have stopped taking HGH and do not follow your doctor’s advice for maintaining your results, you can revert to all of the health complications or health conditions that required your prescription in the first place. That may include:
Again, we cannot stress enough how important it is to never, ever cease taking your HGH “cold turkey” without telling your healthcare provider. Such an abrupt stop in taking HGH can have the following negative impacts:
One of the most common problems that happens when you stop HGH improperly is weight gain. This is especially true if one of the reasons you were prescribed HGH was for obesity. This is mainly due to the impact that HGH has on fat metabolism.
This kind of weight gain is often associated with children who are being treated for failure to reach growth milestones. One such study found that children who are experiencing growth hormone deficiency due to Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS) often see significant increases in weight when they stop taking HGH. Children with PWS who have stopped HGH often saw increases in body fat of as much as 40%. These same children also tend to see other obesity-related issues, such as increased cholesterol levels and diabetes.
The same kinds of weight gain and metabolic issues are not uncommon in adults who stop taking HGH without proper supervision.
If we have led you to believe that stopping HGH can be problematical even when you have successfully completed treatment – nothing could be further from the truth! Stopping HGH properly after you have finished your therapy should be looked at as an accomplishment and not a time to worry!
You should celebrate having completed your course of growth hormone replacement therapy and enjoy the new you!
Here are some tips that can help you maintain your results once you have stopped taking HGH injections.
Once you have been properly instructed to stop taking HGH, our doctors will also recommend daily vitamins and nutritional supplements that you can take that will help increase and maintain your body’s natural production of HGH.
